Realdania has established two fellowships in journalism in cooperation with the independent center for constructive journalism, Constructive Institute in Aarhus, Denmark.

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The goal is to create a more nuanced media coverage of marginalized residential areas, and of housing conditions in remote areas in Denmark.

The two fellowships that start on September 1st2018 will give two experienced journalists the opportunity to examine how the media cover marginalized residential areas as well as the remote areas in Denmark. They will also examine what the media

coverage does to the view upon and development of the two residential areas.

The two journalists will be fellows for 10 months at Constructive Institute, an independent center for constructive journalism, located at Aarhus University.

The fellowship is inspired by a model that is known from fellowships at the American Universities Stanford and Harvard.

The two journalists will become part of a team of 8 fellows who are all on leave from their jobs as journalists or editors, and they will all participate in the ongoing discussion on how to improve journalism through constructive journalism.

The two fellowships will be named “The Realdania Fellowship focused on marginalized residential areas” and “The Realdania Fellowship focused on remote areas in Denmark”.

During the fellowship the two journalists will get access to follow courses at Aarhus University while gaining an education in constructive journalism at Constructive Institute.

At Realdania the head of philanthropy, Anne Skovbro, describes the granting of the two fellowships to Constructive Institute as a very natural part of Realdania’s goal to improve the life quality in the constructed environment. She says:

“Constructive Institute works to add more focus and facts to journalism as well as being more solution and inspirational oriented. In many ways this fits in with Realdania’s way of working, where we have focus on the good solutions that can spread to the single projects and further out to society. Both the marginalized residential areas and the Danish remote areas contain complex problems, where nothing is black and white, and where statistics not always illustrate a precise picture. It is therefore important that the subjects in the public debates deal with the existing nuances. We hope that the two fellows will contribute to this, “ says Anne Skovbro.

The director of the Constructive Institute, Ulrik Haagerup, welcomes the grants for the two fellowships from Realdania:

“We are proud to include Realdania in the group that shares the beliefs about constructive journalism being crucial for a well-functioning democracy. Realdania also contributes to the development of the press as they are giving these talents an opportunity to acquire the newest knowledge and educate themselves to become ambassadors for a more responsible and constructive role in the social debate”, says the founder and director of Constructive Institute, former Executive Director of News at the Danish Public Broadcasting Corporation, Ulrik Haagerup.

The background of the corporation regarding the two new fellowships is that the two subjects have a great impact on society, and at the moment they have an intense media coverage due to different political initiatives.

How the media cover the areas have an impact on both the people that live in those areas and for the society’s view of both the areas and their residents. Because of that it is important with a nuanced coverage that also has focus on solutions. For the two fellows the goal is to contribute to this.

The new fellows will be pointed out before June 1st from a number of applications that have already been handed in to Constructive Institute.